Kemper Profiling Amplifier Review

When was the last time that someone
tried to sell you an all-in-one amplifier?
Was it at the start of the modeling
craze in the early 2000s, or was it at the
height of the solid-state amp boom when
everybody was saying tubes were on their
way out? Few would blame you if you
tuned out the hype entirely at this point.

Kemper Amplification, however, has
taken a very different approach to the challenge
of delivering a multitude of amp
tones in a single unit. Instead of designing a
modeler that is loaded with preprogrammed
emulations of the classics, the Kemper
Profiling Amplifier lets you create your own
models from real amps—the ones that best
suit your own playing style.

Profilin’ and Stylin’
While the Profiling Amplifier looks like
it would be at home on a very advanced
alien spacecraft, the profiling process itself
is surprisingly simple. To set up a profile,
you warm up a tube amp (solid-state amps
work, too), plug a guitar into the Kemper’s
front input jack, and run an XLR cable
from the Kemper’s rear-mounted XLR jack
to a microphone set up to mic the source
amp’s speaker. Then, you complete a loop
by running a patch cable from the amplifier’s
input jack to the Kemper’s 1/4" direct
output/send jack. Through this loop, the
Kemper captures the tone DNA of the tube
amp. It’s sci-fi stuff, but it works.

The process is also surprisingly fast. You
set the 5-way rotary chicken-head knob
on the left side to the profiler setting, and
the LCD screen gives you easy-to-follow
instructions. You play through the amp
you’re profiling and, using a pair of headphones,
listen to how it sounds through
the mic. Once you have an accurate sound
picture of the amp, you start the profiling
process. The Kemper sends out three
pieces of garbled noise to the amp’s input
that represent high-, middle- and low-frequency
ranges. It sounds a little like a
fax modem running through a Big Muff,
but don’t worry—these signals are designed
to evaluate how the amp’s circuitry and
cabinet react to the input. The mic picks
up the signals as they come out the other
end of the amp circuits and cabinet, and
then sends them back into the Kemper for
processing—the end result, as strange as
it seems, is a super-accurate profile of the
amp’s unique dynamics and response to different
frequencies and signals.

Once you create a basic profile of your
amp, you can fine-tune it in the amplifier
portion of the stack section (top middle of
control panel). Here you can alter power
amp sag, dial in vintage or modern response
qualities, adjust the level of compression,
and even how much pick attack comes
through. The cabinet’s voicing and size can
be changed, too.

You can also apply several fully adjustable
effects, including distortion, phasing,
EQ, and delay from the Kemper’s model
banks, and place them in any order you
desire. When you want to save the rig
you’ve assembled, you simply press the
store button, name the preset, and save
it to the Kemper’s storage banks. When
you want to call the profile back up, you
flip the rotary switch to browse and scroll
through the patches until you find what
you’re looking for. Conveniently, Kemper
ships the device with a ton of fully editable
factory patches.

Since the Kemper is essentially a preamp,
the device has a couple of options for
amplification. For live use, you can run out
of two XLR or two 1/4" outs to a PA mixer,
or to a separate power amp running into a
speaker cabinet (the amp’s cabinet emulation
can be disabled for these situations).
A dedicated monitor output and S/PDIF
input and output jacks round out the audio
connections, and a set of MIDI and 1/4"
jacks for footswitching offer a wide range of
control options. The back panel also sports
an RJ-45 jack for network interfacing,
along with two USB jacks for updating the
firmware and uploading custom rigs from
other Kemper Profiling Amp users.

Sadly, one of the amp’s coolest features,
the perform function (which essentially
allows you to compile up to five saved rigs
in one patch, and switch between them
either via MIDI or a footswitch when playing
live) was not a working feature in the
software at the time of this review. Kemper
promises that the feature will be available as
a firmware update in the future.

Hearing is Believing
The Kemper’s ability to quickly and painlessly
capture the essence and quality of
every amp that I threw at it never failed
to amaze. If the unit has a flaw, it’s that
a given amp profile relies on the quality
of the signal that you capture with the
microphone—which means you need
some audio engineering instincts and a
decent microphone. If you have nice condenser
mics, you’ll need phantom power
that the Kemper’s XLR jack doesn’t offer,
but in such a case you likely have nice
preamps providing power anyway.

Remarkably, such limitations have little
effect on the quality of the Kemper’s ability
to capture an amp’s essence. I rounded up
a pretty diverse collection of amps for the
Kemper to clone—an Xits Sadie combo,
Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier, Verellen
Meatsmoke, Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissue,
and a Vox AC30 combo.

With the Dual Rectifier running into
an Emperor 4x12 loaded with Weber
C1265 speakers, and a Les Paul Custom
in hand, I used a Sennheiser e609 microphone
to find the cab’s sweet spot and
initiated the profiling process.

When I was finished, I was floored
at how precisely the Kemper captured
the Mesa’s complex tonality. The profile
loosened and tightened in response to
pick attack in the same manner as the
actual amp, and cleaned up in a frighteningly
similar fashion when I rolled down
the guitar’s volume control. Even the
Kemper’s onboard, 3-band EQ, presence,
and gain controls affected the model in
much the same way as the real Boogie
would—especially with respect to how the
gain control tends to tighten and soften
the amp’s response.

Each of the remaining amps generated
similarly accurate patches. The AC30 as
captured by the Kemper delivered a big,
robust midrange that bloomed as I opened
up the gain, and displayed a knack for
refined high end after I switched to a 2010
Fender American Strat.

The sparkle and clarity of the Twin
Reverb was captured flawlessly, and I
was ecstatic that I was able to add a little
something to the Twin formula that I’ve
wanted for a while—a little power section
sag at crisper settings. I felt as if I was
effectively building my own custom amplifier
at this point—pulling back the amp’s
pick attack level and adding in a little
more vintage response to warm things
up a bit. Since I profiled the amp dry, I
threw on a little reverb and a slight delay,
which made the tone even more expansive.
And the Kemper’s stompbox models also
offered some very smooth-sounding reproductions
of famous boost pedals—like the
Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer—that juiced
the front end nicely.

One amp that the Kemper had a tougher
time nailing was the Xits Sadie, which has a
unique clarity to it that I’ve rarely heard in
an amp before.—it’s very, very pristine and
honest. The Kemper did an admirable job
of getting a good picture of the amp’s tone
and response qualities, but fell a bit short
on really attaining its glassiest highs.

Kemper didn’t really design the Profiling
Amp to handle bass amps, but it’s definitely
capable of doing this, and according to
the company, bass profiling is completely
safe. Even though the Kemper didn’t
capture the huge subs that the Verellen
Meatsmoke is capable of generating, it did
get the tonality and response down eerily
well, with plenty of low end for most types
of bass work.

The Verdict
The Kemper Profiling Amp is one of those
pieces of gear that you have to check out,
regardless of how you feel about modeling,
digital circuitry, or anything else that dares
challenge the supremacy of the classics.
True, you need to profile a great amp to
get great tone. And there is a bit too much
room for human variables in the tone-capturing
process to guarantee the results.

On the other hand, this isn’t simply
another modeler that makes promises
that it really can’t keep. It’s capable of
truly awe-inspiring results and it’s actually
quite affordable for what it does—which
is much, much more than what we can
cover in this review. Perhaps the only
real drawback will be the response you
get from friends when you come over to
profile their own classics—making you
a new guitar-playing version of the guy
that comes by to drink all your beer and
rip all your CDs. But if you need tone by
any means necessary, the Kemper Profiling
Amplifier holds the key.

A native of the Pacific Northwest, Jordan grew up traveling the country as the son of theater technical directors and speech instructors. His exposure to the performing arts early on helped foster his love for music and attention to detail, and upon receiving his first guitar at age 15, he became hooked. Jordan brings a considerable background of gear knowledge and tech experience to Premier Guitar, and has contributed an extensive amount of articles, artist interviews and Rig Rundown videos since late 2008. He lives in the Iowa City area, where he also works to bring music education initiatives to both local and regional communities.

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